English Language
and Literature

Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies: Joshua Scodel, G-B 308, 702-8024
Secretary for Undergraduate English: JoAnn Baum, G-B 309, 702-7092

Program of Study

Our undergraduate program introduces students to English-language literature, drama, and film. Courses address fundamental questions about topics such as the status of literature within culture, the literary history of a period, the achievements of a major author, the defining characteristics of a genre, the politics of interpretation, the formal beauties of individual works, and the methods of literary scholarship and research.

The study of English may be pursued as preparation for graduate work in literature or other disciplines or as a complement to general education. English concentrators learn how to ask probing questions of a large body of material, how to formulate, analyze, and judge questions and their answers, and how to present both questions and answers in clear, cogent prose, which are skills central to virtually any career. To the end of cultivating and testing these skills, each course in English stresses writing.

While aimed at developing reading, writing, and research skills, the undergraduate program in English recognizes the value of bringing a range of disciplinary perspectives to bear on the works studied. Besides offering a wide variety of courses in English, the department encourages students to integrate the intellectual concerns of other fields into their study of literature and film by permitting up to two courses outside the English department to be counted as part of a concentration, if a student can demonstrate the relevance of these courses to his or her program of study.

Program Requirements

The program presupposes the completion of one of the Common Core Humanities sequences (or its equivalent), in which basic training is provided in the methods, problems, and disciplines of humanistic study. Because literary study itself attends to language and is enriched by some knowledge of other cultural expressions, the concentration in English requires students to extend their work in humanities beyond the level required of all College students in the important areas of foreign language and the nonverbal arts. English concentrators must take two quarters of work in a foreign language beyond the Common Core requirement (which is four quarters in French, German, Latin, and Spanish; three in all other languages), unless they have already demonstrated an equivalent proficiency in a foreign language. English concentrators must also take one course in Music, Art History, or Visual Arts, beyond the Common Core requirement and in a discipline different from that of the course used to satisfy the Core requirement. (For the purposes of this requirement, Art History and Visual Arts are separate disciplines. Students who use an Art History course to satisfy the Core requirement, for example, may use a Visual Arts course to meet this further requirement.) If General Studies in the Humanities 101 has not been used to satisfy the Core requirement, it may be used to satisfy this requirement.

All English concentrators must take an introductory course (English 101). This course prepares students to enter into the discussions that occur in more advanced undergraduate courses by providing some grounding in critical methodology and controversies across a range of genres. Because English 101 serves as an introduction to the concentration, and because this course is a prerequisite for some English courses, newly declared English concentrators and potential concentrators are urged to take it as early as possible in their undergraduate careers. English 101 is offered every year.

Students are expected to study British and American literature and film from a variety of periods and genres. Reading and understanding works written in different historical periods require skills, information, and historical imagination that contemporary works do not require. Students are accordingly asked to study a variety of historical periods in order to develop their abilities as readers, to discover areas of literature that they might not otherwise explore, and to develop a self-conscious grasp of literary history. In addition to the normal range of courses studying authors and genres from many different eras, the program in English includes courses focused directly on periods of literary history. These courses explore the ways terms such as "Renaissance" or "Romantic" have been defined and debated, and raise questions about literary change (influence, tradition, originality, segmentation, repetition, and others) that go along with periodizing. The program requires two courses in literature written before 1700 and two courses in literature written between 1700 and 1900, with at least one of these four a designated "period" course; or, alternatively, three designated "period" courses, with at least one focused on a period or periods before 1700 and at least one focused on a period or periods after 1700. The program also asks that students study both British and American literature, requiring at least one course in each. Furthermore, because an understanding of literature demands sensitivity to various conventions and different genres, concentrators are required to take at least one course in each of the genres of fiction, poetry, and drama/film.

The concentration in English requires at least ten departmental courses. In the fourth year of College study, most concentrators carry out a senior project for which they receive course credit. In lieu of a senior project, some students may choose to take a departmental course. In special cases, the senior project may take the form of a piece of creative writing or involvement in a dramatic production; normally, however, the senior project consists of a critical essay. Such an essay is to be a fully finished product, the best written work of which the student is capable. This B.A. paper may develop from a paper written in an earlier course or from independent research. Whatever the approach, the student is uniformly required to work on an approved topic and to submit a final version that has been written, critiqued by both a faculty advisor and a B.A. project supervisor, rethought, and rewritten. Seniors devote time in at least two quarters to their senior essays, and they consult at scheduled intervals with their individual faculty advisor (the field specialist) and with the supervisor assigned to monitor senior projects. To be eligible for departmental honors, a student must complete a senior project.

Summary of Requirements

NOTE: Some courses satisfy more than one requirement. For example, a course in metaphysical poetry would count as a course satisfying the genre requirement for poetry, as a course satisfying the British literature requirement, and as a course satisfying the pre-1700 requirement.

Courses outside the Department Taken for Concentration Credit. With the prior approval of the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies, a maximum of two courses outside the English department (excluding the required language courses; and General Studies in the Humanities 101, or the musical or visual art course) may count toward the concentration if the student is able to demonstrate their relevance to his or her program. The student must propose, justify, and obtain approval for these courses before registering for them. Such courses may be selected from related areas in the University (history, philosophy, social sciences, divinity, and so on) or they may be taken in a study abroad program for which the student has received the permission from the Office of the Dean of Students in the College and an appropriate administrator in the English department.

Reading Courses (English 297 and 299). Upon prior approval by the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies, the undergraduate reading course (English 297) may be used to fulfill concentration requirements. No student may use more than two English 297 courses toward concentration requirements. Seniors who wish to register for the B.A. paper preparation course (English 299) must indicate that they have arranged for appropriate faculty supervision and obtain the permission of the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies. English 299 does, however, count as an English elective and not as one of the courses fulfilling distribution requirements for the concentration. If a student registers for both English 297 and English 299, and if English 297 is devoted to work that develops into the B.A. project, only one of these two courses may be counted toward the departmental requirement of ten courses in English. NOTE: Reading courses are special research opportunities that must be justified by the quality of the proposed plan of study; they also depend upon available faculty supervision. No student can automatically expect to arrange a reading course. For alternative approaches to preparing a B.A. paper, see the next section.

Senior Project: The B.A. Paper. Students who wish to undertake a senior project must register with the undergraduate secretary by the end of the fifth week of the first quarter of their graduating year. To help ensure the careful, finished work that must characterize the senior project, a B.A. project supervisor is appointed to monitor seniors' work on their projects. Seniors meet with their supervisor during the first quarter and at regular intervals thereafter. The supervisor informs, helps, counsels, and participates in critiquing the versions of the project. In meeting initially, the student and the supervisor seek to define a workable topic, to determine a plan for developing the topic, and to identify an appropriate faculty advisor for the position of field specialist, who works more closely with the individual student and directs the actual researching and writing of the B.A. paper. During the winter quarter, the supervisor convenes groups of students to discuss their work in progress. Schedules of the quarterly deadlines for registering and for submitting drafts and final essays can be obtained in the undergraduate secretary's office (G-B 309).

There are three options for the senior project:

l. The Standard Option. Ordinarily, the project is a critical or historical essay, of no more than twenty-five pages, on some topic in British or American literature. A B.A. paper should demonstrate the student's ability to identify a question or problem and to pursue it further than is usual in a course paper. The B.A. paper is judged by how well a student has thought and rethought a problem, and written and rewritten a response. A senior is to devote time in at least two academic quarters to writing the senior essay.

2. The Writing Option. Those students who exhibit interest in and ability for extended work in writing poetry, fiction, drama, or expository prose may petition the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies, requesting permission to prepare a piece of such writing for a senior project. The petition must include both a proposal as to what work is to be done and a piece of writing that is to be evaluated by two faculty members before permission to proceed is granted. Any such student must have taken two one-quarter courses in writing.

3. The Drama Option. Students with particularly strong interests and background in the dramatic arts may be permitted to carry out the senior project by producing and/or directing and/or acting in a dramatic or cinematic production for which a director's (actor's) notebook or an explanatory essay is prepared. However, it must be stressed that opportunities to produce or direct a play or film are very limited, and opportunities to act are only somewhat less so. Applications to use the Reynolds Club theaters must be submitted at least six months in advance of the desired scheduling. Winter quarter time is usually less in demand than spring quarter. In this option, as in the others, the senior project requires supervision. Those students who wish to try to work in and write about a dramatic production for a senior project must have taken two one-quarter courses in drama. They must obtain prior approval from the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies (with whom a field specialist is arranged), as well as approval from the appropriate theater personnel (with whom scheduling is arranged).

The senior project may be carried out either in noncurricular arrangements with the supervisor and field specialist, or through formal course registration (English 299). The student may prepare the B.A. paper by starting afresh on a topic of his or her choosing or by working from a paper previously submitted in a regular course. Because revising and rethinking are vital parts of the process of preparing a B.A. paper, students cannot wait to begin their preparations until the quarter in which they wish to graduate.

NOTE: As stated above, English 299 may not be counted among the courses fulfilling distribution requirements for the concentration. Any student may, of course, take English 299 as an English or free elective. No one can register for English 299 without previously obtaining permission from a faculty member willing to serve as field specialist for the project.

Advising in the Concentration. Concentrators in English are expected to review their programs at least once a year with the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies. In the quarter before graduation, students are required to complete and submit a departmental worksheet that indicates plans for meeting all concentration requirements. These worksheets can be obtained in the undergraduate secretary's office (G-B 309). The Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies has regularly scheduled office hours during which she is available for consultation and guidance on a student's selection of courses, future career plans, and questions or problems relating to the concentration.

Students are encouraged to consult the faculty directory distributed by the English department. This directory lists faculty interests and current projects, providing leads for students seeking general counsel on their intellectual direction or specific guidance in reading courses. Faculty are available to students in regular office hours posted every quarter.

Grading. Students concentrating in English must receive letter grades in all thirteen courses aimed at meeting the requirements of the degree program. Exceptions are allowed only in creative writing courses where the instructor regards P/N grades as an appropriate form of accreditation. Students not concentrating in English may take English courses on a P/N basis if they receive the prior consent of the faculty member for a given course.

Honors. Special honors in English are reserved for those graduating seniors who achieve overall excellence in grades for courses within the concentration and who also complete a senior project of the highest quality. For honors candidacy, a student must have at least a 3.0 overall grade point average for College work. Honors recommendations are made to the Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division by the faculty of the department through the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies.

Faculty

LAUREN BERLANT, Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

DAVID M. BEVINGTON, Phyllis Fay Horton Professor in the Humanities; Professor, Departments of English Language & Literature and Comparative Literature, and the College

HOMI K. BHABHA, Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

WILLIAM L. BROWN, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

JAMES K. CHANDLER, Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

GERALD GRAFF, George M. Pullman Professor, Departments of Education and English Language & Literature and the College

ELAINE HADLEY, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

MIRIAM HANSEN, Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities, Department of English Language & Literature, Committees on the Visual Arts and General Studies in the Humanities, and the College

ELIZABETH HELSINGER, Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

GEORGE HILLOCKS, Professor, Departments of English Language & Literature and Education

J. PAUL HUNTER, Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities; Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

JANICE L. KNIGHT, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

LOREN KRUGER, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

MARK KRUPNICK, Professor, Department of English Language & Literature, the Divinity School, and Committees on Jewish Studies and General Studies in the Humanities

JAMES F. LASTRA, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

SAREE MAKDISI, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

MARK MILLER, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

W. J. T. MITCHELL, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English Language & Literature and Art, Committee on the Visual Arts, and the College

JANEL MUELLER, William Rainey Harper Professor in the Humanities; Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

MICHAEL J. MURRIN, Professor, Departments of English Language & Literature and Comparative Literature, the Divinity School, and the College

DEBORAH NELSON, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

LAWRENCE ROTHFIELD, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

LISA RUDDICK, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

JAY SCHLEUSENER, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

JOSHUA SCODEL, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature, Committee on General Studies in the Humanities, and the College

RICHARD G. STERN, Helen A. Regenstein Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

RICHARD A. STRIER, Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

KATIE TRUMPENER, Associate Professor, Departments of English Language & Literature, Germanic Studies, and Comparative Literature, Committee on General Studies in the Humanities, and the College

WILLIAM VEEDER, Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

ROBERT VON HALLBERG, Professor, Departments of English Language & Literature and Germanic Studies and the College

CHRISTINA VON NOLCKEN, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

KENNETH W. WARREN, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature, Committee on General Studies in the Humanities, and the College

JOSEPH M. WILLIAMS, Professor, Departments of English Language & Literature and Linguistics and the College

ALOK YADAV, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College

ANTHONY YU, Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities, Departments of English Language & Literature, Comparative Literature, the Divinity School, and Committees on Social Thought and East Asian Languages & Civilization

Courses

Refer to letters after course descriptions for courses that fulfill program requirements: (A) Period; (B) Pre-1700; (C) 1700-1900; (D) Poetry; (E) Fiction; (F) Drama/Film; (G) American; (H) British.

101. Methodologies and Issues in Textual Studies. Required of English concentrators. This course introduces students to the concerns and critical practices of English. It provides some grounding in critical methodologies and controversies across a range of genres and prepares students to enter into the discussions that occur in more advanced courses. L. Ruddick, Staff, Winter; J. Knight, Staff, Spring.

102-103. Problems in Gender Studies (=Eng 102-103, GendSt 101-102, GS Hum 228-229, Hist 180-181, Hum 228-229, SocSci 282-283). PQ: Second- or third-year standing and completion of a Common Core social sciences or humanities course, or the equivalent. This two-quarter interdisciplinary sequence is designed as an introduction to theories and critical practices in the study of feminism, gender, and sexuality. Both classic texts and recent reconceptualizations of these contested fields are examined. Problems and cases from a variety of cultures and historical periods are considered, and the course pursues their differing implications for local, national, and global politics. Topics might include the politics of reproduction; gender and postcolonialism; women, sexual scandal, and the law; race and sexual paranoia; and sexual subcultures. D. Nelson, Staff, Autumn; E. Povinelli, Staff, Winter.

104. Introduction to Poetry. PQ: Common Core humanities sequence. This course studies the nature, kinds, and formal structures of lyric poetry. Drawing on poems from the Renaissance to the present, the course studies meter (and free verse), imagery, tone, set forms (sonnets, etc.), kinds and modes (ode and elegy), and large-scale poems without pre-set methods of organization. R. Strier. Spring. (D)

107. Introduction to Fiction. In the first half of this course, we focus on the principal elements that contribute to effect in fiction (setting, characterization, style, imagery, and structure) in order to understand the variety of effects possible with each element. We read several different writers in each of the first five weeks. In the second half of the course, we bring the elements together and study how they work in concert. This detailed study concentrates on one or, at most, two texts a week. W. Veeder. Winter. (E)

108. Introduction to Film I (=ArtH 190, CMS 101, Eng 108, GS Hum 200). PQ: This is the first part of a two-quarter course. The two parts may be taken individually, but taking them in sequence is helpful. The first part introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which are discussed through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of the cinema as an institution that comprises an industrial system of production, social and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films discussed include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles. J. Lastra. Autumn. (F)

126/326. Visual Culture (=ArtH 258/358, CMS 278, COVA 254, Eng 126/326, MAPH 343). PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or COVA course, or consent of instructor. This course explores the fundamental questions in the interdisciplinary study of visual culture: What are the cultural (and, by the same token, natural) components in the structure of visual experience? What is seeing? What is a spectator? What is the difference between visual and verbal representation? How do visual media exert power, elicit desire and pleasure, and construct the boundaries of subjective and social experience in the private and public sphere? How do questions of politics, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity inflect the construction of visual semiosis? W. J. T. Mitchell. Spring. (F)

130/330. The Little Red Schoolhouse (Academic and Professional Writing). P/N grading optional for non-English concentrators. This course teaches the skills needed to write clear and coherent expository prose and to edit the writing of others. The course consists of weekly lectures on Thursdays, immediately followed by tutorials addressing the issues in the lecture. On Tuesdays, students discuss short weekly papers in two-hour tutorials consisting of seven students and a tutor. Students may replace the last three papers with a longer paper and, with the consent of relevant faculty, write it in conjunction with another class or as part of the senior project. Materials fee $20. L. McEnerney, J. Williams, Staff. Winter, Spring.

131/331. Writing Fiction. PQ: Consent of instructor after submission of a short sample manuscript. Much of the course centers on student stories. These are (painlessly) mixed with stories from an anthology of good fiction. R. Stern. Spring. (E)

135/335. Writing Fiction and Poetry. PQ: Consent of instructor after submission of a short sample manuscript. Discussion of student writing and the problems of literary composition. R. Stern. Autumn. (E)

138/310. History and Theory of Drama I (=ClCiv 212/312, ComLit 305, Eng 138/310, GS Hum 242/342). PQ: May be taken in sequence with Eng 139/311 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in western drama from the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, medieval religious drama, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, along with some consideration of dramatic theory by Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, and Dryden. The course features optional but highly recommended end-of-week workshops in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, to discover what is at work in the scene, and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with some other members of the class. D. Bevington, N. Rudall. Autumn. (B, F, H)

139/311. History and Theory of Drama II (=ComLit 306, Eng 139/311, GS Hum 243/343). PQ: May be taken in sequence with Eng 138/310 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in western drama from the late seventeenth century into the twentieth: Molière, Goldsmith, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Wilde, Shaw, Brecht, Beckett, and Stoppard. Attention is also paid to theorists of the drama, including Stanislavsky, Artaud, and Grotowski. Like the autumn-quarter course, the winter-quarter course features optional but highly recommended end-of-week workshops in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, to discover what is at work in the scene, and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with some other members of the class. D. Bevington, N. Rudall. Winter. (F)

149/349. Old English (=Eng 149/349, German 310). This course aims to provide the student with the linguistic skills and historical and cultural perspectives necessary for advanced work on Old English. C. von Nolcken. Autumn. (B, D, H)

150/350. Old English Poetry. A reading of some of the major poems in Old English. In addition to the texts, we examine the nature of the textual and critical problems encountered in studying this literature. C. von Nolcken. Winter. (B, D, H)

151/351. Alfred, 1100. PQ: Eng 149/349 or equivalent. Notworthy, no doubt, for being the only monarch to have two centenary celebrations within one century, Alfred has now become the site for contesting interpretation of Anglo-Saxon literary culture, as the recent Smyth book has demonstrated. The ride of Old English prose and the implications of that rise have furthermore contributed to a desire for revision. Still some old issues remain, e.g., the question of attribution lurks everywhere, while Victorian excess puzzles and embarrasses every subsequent generation. This course will focus on both old and new questions. Students will consider the work safely attributed to Alfred and other generally "Alfredian": manuscript work, translation workshops, Socratic discussion, and occasional lectures will constitute the course. Course materials will e read in translation and in the original; one previous course in Old English is necessary and confidence with Latin will be desirable. To participate in this course fully students will need e-mail and web access. This course meets at the Newberry Library on Fridays from 2 to 5 p.m. starting January 8 and ending March 19. For more information, consult Christina von Nocklen (702-7977, mcv4@midway.uchicago.edu). P. Szarmach. Winter. (B, H)

155. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (=Eng 155, Fndmtl 257/327). PQ: Knowledge of Middle English or of Chaucer's poetry not required. We examine Chaucer's art as revealed in selections from The Canterbury Tales. Our primary emphasis is on a close reading of individual tales, although we also pay attention to Chaucer's sources and to other medieval works providing relevant background. C. von Nolcken. Winter. (B, D, H)

165. Early Shakespeare. We read Shakespeare's major Elizabethan plays, including The Comedy of Errors, Richard III, The Taming of the Shrew, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), The Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night. R. Strier. Spring. (B, F, H)

166. Shakespeare II: Tragedies and Romances. PQ: Eng 165 helpful but not required. This course studies Shakespeare's major tragedies and one late romance. It concentrates on major themes and on dramaturgy in the second half of Shakespeare's career as a dramatist. We read plays that include Romeo and Juliet, the four "major tragedies" (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth), Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. The course features optional but highly recommended end-of-the week workshops in which selected scenes are read aloud dramatically with dramaturgical analysis; the small-group workshops are one hour a week in addition to scheduled class time. D. Bevington. Winter. (B, F, H)

169. Gender and Politics in the English Renaissance (=Eng 169, GendSt 169). This course focuses on some major texts of the English Renaissance in the context of ideas about the rediscovery of ancient classical literatures, the changing role of women, political conflict under the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, perceptions of the New World in an age of discovery, a growing sense of national identity, encounters with the Other in the form of new cultures and ideologies, the battle between Catholic and Protestant, and still more. Authors include Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare's sonnets (the plays we leave out, though their presence is continually felt), Lady Mary Wroth, other sonneteers, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, George Herbert, Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, John Webster, and John Milton. Discussion section required. D. Bevington. Autumn. (A, B, D, H)

175. Milton. A reading of the major poetry with special emphasis on Paradise Lost. M. Murrin. Autumn. (B, D, H)

183. Eighteenth-Century English Poetry: Conventions and Experiments. During the eighteenth century, a great deal of questioning of poetic conventions took place. The poetry of this period, accordingly, is very self-conscious, and not infrequently innovative and experimental. We examine the changing modes of this poetry and the kinds of cultural work different poems saw themselves as undertaking. Selections include poems by Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith, and William Cowper, as well as from less familiar poets of the period. A. Yadav. Spring. (C, D, H)

194/394. Enlightenment Discourses. The period of the Enlightenment was one of the crucial moments in the development of modern views on human society and culture. To explore some of the modes and assumptions of Enlightenment social thought, we read works by Bernard Mandeville, Voltaire, Montesquieu, David Hume, Edward Gibbon, and Adam Smith. These works represent an important part of the culture of European modernity, but this intellectual tradition has, since its own day, been subject to criticism from a wide variety of perspectives. We work toward understanding these works on their own terms, but also examine the assumptions and implications of their outlooks. A. Yadav. Winter. (C, H)

195. Montaigne and the Personal Essay (=Eng 195, Fndmtl 238). Readings in the essays of Montaigne focus on human nature and its actions and feelings, virtues, vices, religion, politics, education, sex, death, happiness, friendship, cannibals, books, customs, languages, and clothes. The intention is to try to understand, as well as one can, the ideas and the forms of the essays and, most notably, the character of their author. This study is followed by short readings in some major English essayists, chosen from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, such as Bacon, Addison, Dr. Johnson, Lamb, Hazlitt, Orwell, and Virginia Woolf. S. Tave. Winter. (C, H)

209. The Romantic Period: The Age of Revolution. PQ: This is one of four designated "Period" survey courses. This course explores the complex and often volatile relationships between literary production and its backgrounds in Britain from 1785 to 1848. We consider how some of the important historical and political developments contributed to changes in British literary and cultural production, and how, in turn, cultural and literary production participated in the making of what has been called "the Age of Revolution." Readings draw on the work of Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, Byron, Mary Shelley, Malthus, Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Austen, Scott, and others. S. Makdisi. Spring. (A, C, D, H)

210. The Victorian Period: The Age of Capital. PQ: This is the second part of a two-quarter sequence. The two parts may be taken individually, but students are strongly encouraged to take both parts. This course explores the literary history of the high Victorian era as an expression of (and participant in) broader political, cultural, and intellectual developments of this crucial period. Drawing on readings from a wide range of forms, genres, and disciplines we examine several quintessentially "Victorian" issues and describe the ways these issues make themselves felt within literary texts. Our primary interest is how the Victorians developed new kinds of literature, such as the dramatic monologue, the industrial novel, psychological realism, aestheticist criticism, and the detective story. Authors considered may include Dickens, Gaskell, Browning, Eliot, Darwin, Nightingale, Arnold, Pater, Wilde, Kipling, and Conan Doyle. L. Rothfield. Spring. (A, C, E, H)

213. Changing Stations: Narratives of Social Mobility in the Victorian Novel. From Dickens to Gissing, form Bronte to Braddon, the tale of social mobility changed in important and unexpected ways in the 19th century. Ad out readings trace this archetypal plotline through sixty years of permutations, we will raise questions about the range of social experience available to the Victorian and how their imaginative literature reflected, critiqued, or transformed that experience. Why did the literary vision of class mobility grow darker even as real class boundaries were becoming more permeable? In what ways did the Victorian subject's experience of class hinge on gender? What was the impact of the social world on literary form and style? Conversely, what were-and what are- the possibilities for literature as a social practice? We will read primary texts including Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Lady Audley's Secret, Jude the Obscure, Born in Exile, and The Importance of Being Ernest. Laura Demanski. Autumn.(C,E,H)

216. Thomas Hardy (=DivRL 220, Eng 216, Fndmtl 287). This course focuses on Hardy's greatest novel, Jude the Obscure. Jude is an intensely idealistic young Englishman of the working class whose one great dream is to study at Christminster, a university loosely modeled on Oxford. Unfortunately, Jude's dream comes up against reality: Young men of his class and in his time, no matter how deserving, have no chance whatever of being accepted. This course is about the difficult negotiations, for a young person like Jude, between hopes and realities, ideals and limits, and the dream of success and the possibility of failure. M. Krupnick. Spring. (C, E, H)

222. Anglo-American Gothic Fiction in the Nineteenth Century (=Eng 222, GendSt 222). In the nineteenth century, gothic fiction in English is an Anglo-American phenomenon. America's first internationally recognized literary masterpiece, Rip Van Winkle, is written in England and appears the same year as Frankenstein. Our course studies the transatlantic aspect of the gothic tradition, while we also give full attention to the particular qualities of individual texts. Attention to textual intricacies leads to questions about gender and psychology, as well as culture. Our authors include Washington Irving, Mary Shelley, James Hogg, Poe, Hawthorne, Emily Bronte, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Thomas Hardy. W. Veeder. Spring. (C, E, G, H)

224/425. "South Asian" Postcolonial Literature. We read writings by a range of "South Asian" writers: Mulk Raj Anand, Saadat Hasan Manto, Shaukat Siddiqi, R. Parthasarathy, Mahasweta Devi, Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, and Rohinton Mistry. Marked by quite different kinds of cultural dislocation, this body of work encompasses several different kinds of literary projects. We examine the specifics of context and address that form a central part of what each work is about and that serve to distinguish among the multiple kinds of "postcolonial" literature produced by these writers. A. Yadav. Winter. (E)

228. Contemporary Caribbean Fiction. In this course we will study recent English-language Caribbean fiction and its perspectives on central contemporary issues such as postcolonialism, cross-cultural exchange, and global divisions of capital and labor. Although colonialism deemed the Caribbean a peripheral region, we will consider how interactions there between people from the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe anticipated and helped shape the development of modernity. We will read novels by V.S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid, Jean Rhys, Wilson Harris, Michelle Cliff, and other authors in order to understand how Caribbean society constructs historical consciousness, national and diasporic identities, and racial and sexual difference. James Hannan. Autumn. (E)

229. Contemporary Experimental Fiction. In this course we will read several contemporary fictional texts that diverge, in various ways, from commonly-accepted notions of fiction. Of course, such an inquiry first requires an understanding of what constitutes "standard" fiction (if there is such a thing), in terms of form, content, genre, and style. Only then can we discern what there experimental writers are reacting against, and whether their various forms of experimentation truly signal something "new" in fiction. As we will see, regardless of the strangeness of these new fictions, what seems "new" is often a refiguring of the old. A range of fictional texts will be considered, selected for their diversity of form and style" Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote and The Library of Babel; Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49; Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry; John Hawkes, The Lime Twig; Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters; Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire; Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek; Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting; and Art Spiegelman's Maus. Brian Fagel. Autumn. (E)

232/432. Toward Modernity. This course centers on important twentieth-century texts. Questions about the nature of modernity radiate from the texts. The radiation creates not so much a context for literary discussion as a mental constellation of which the texts are important elements. R. Stern. Autumn. (E)

240. Ulysses and Its Critical Contexts. This course combines close attention to the text of Ulysses with readings designed to give a sense of the range of critical approaches available for interpreting Joyce. These include selected Joyce criticism, as well as material from the culture of early twentieth-century Dublin (including newspapers, music hall lyrics, and magazines) that we can place alongside Ulysses in order to formulate ideas about Joyce's relationship to popular culture. L. Ruddick. Spring. (E, H)

257. Postbellum and Pre-Modern Literature. In this course we try to make some sense of the range of literary responses to the Civil War and reunification in U.S. literature. Looking at both major and minor American writers, we assess the problems and consequences of trying to imagine or re-imagine the nation. Among the works we read are Herman Melville's Billy Budd, John William DeForest's "The Great American Novel" and Miss Ravenal's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty, Albion Tourgee's A Fool's Errand, Henry James's The American, and Joel Chandler Harris's "Free Joe and the Rest of the World." K. Warren. Autumn. (A, C, E, G)

261. American Writing since 1925 (=DivRL 261, Eng 261, GS Hum 225). The linking concern will be religious belief and vestiges (traces) of belief in modern American literature. Wherever relevant, religious or antireligious attitudes (whether of author, character, or the implied reader) will be brought into relation with social and political attitudes. Some writers whose work may be represented on the syllabus are William Faulkner, Nathanael West, Djuna Barnes, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Mary McCarthy, Norman Mailer, Flannery O'Connor, and John Updike. M. Krupnick. Autumn. (E, G)

267. Whitman (=Eng 267, GendSt 267). Beginning with a historical context for understanding Whitman, and closing with current literary-critical contexts for rereading him, we pose basic questions about the relation of literature and history, pleasure and politics, and cultural production and reception. We begin by situating Whitman's poetics of incorporation with other modes of collection, organization, and display (from Thoreau's work as a naturalist to the 1850 U.S. census, from daguerreotype parlors to medical museums). Though we encounter some of Whitman's prose, we concentrate on his major poems and on the place they have occupied in cultural and political imaginations. B. Brown. Winter. (C, D, G)

269. Postwar U.S. Literature (=Eng 269, GendSt 269). This survey of postwar U.S. literature begins with Arthur Miller's The Crucible and concludes with Tony Kushner's Angels in America. These works, haunted by the Rosenberg and McCarthy trials, frame a course that considers a variety of genres and experiments in poetic language in terms of the political and cultural upheavals of the cold war. In addition to the two plays, we are likely to read prose works by Jack Kerouac, Malcolm X, Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon, Ismail Reed, E. L. Doctorow, Norman Mailer, and Toni Morrison, and poetry by Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath. D. Nelson. Spring. (D, E, G)

270. Fiction of Three Americas (=Eng 270, GendSt 270). What constitutes "American Fiction?" This question has become prominent in recent years as readers have begun to take seriously a fact we've always "known:" that three "Americas" (North, Central, and South) compose our hemisphere, and that each realm has contributed significantly to the literary compositions of post-modernism. Close reading is supplemented by attention to issues of gender, psychology, and society, as we explore the private and social sources of the pain so evident in our texts. Authors include Borges, Rosario Ferre, Carlos Fuetes, Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Andre Dubus, and Bharati Mukherjee. W. Veeder. Winter. (E, G)

271. American Literature of the 1850's. This course explores a group of texts that together help mark the 1850's as a particular fertile decade for American literature--an age that simultaneously saw the birth of the bestseller and the full flowering of the "American Renaissance." We work to understand these texts in their rich historical and cultural contexts, investigating how they engage with debates over slavery, agitation for women's rights, the expansion of the market economy, and particularly the continued rise of the "cult of domesticity." Texts include Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables, Thoreau's Walden, Melville's Moby Dick, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall, and Harriet Wilson's Our Nig: Sketches in the Life of a Free Black, as well as materials ranging form domestic handbooks to magazines and court cases. M. Keller. Winter. (C, E, G)

280. Cinema as Vernacular Modernism (=CMS 246, Eng 280, GS Hum 207). This course considers exemplary films of the 1920s and 1930s as a form of "popular" or "vernacular modernism:" as aesthetic expressions of (and responses to) the social and cultural experience of modernity and modernization. In addition to a small sample of Hollywood films (e.g., The Crowd, and Gold Diggers of 1933), we discuss films from Soviet Russia (Bed and Sofa), Germany (Diary of a Lost Girl), France (Ménilmontant, Coeur Fidèle), England, and (depending on availability) China and Japan. Readings include texts (Kracauer, Benjamin, Epstein, Dulac, Kuleshov, and Shklovsky; and selections from the magazine Close-Up). M. Hansen. Spring.

282/482. The Films of Luis Buñuel (=CMS 262, Eng 282/482). This course examines the fifty-year career of Luis Buñuel, focusing on his films, his work in other media, and his relationship to twentieth-century movements, both intellectual and artistic. Beginning with his Surrealist masterpieces of 1929 to 1933, moving through the neglected Spanish comedies of the 1930s, the Mexican films of the 1940s and 1950s, and finally the international productions of the 1960s and 1970s, we concentrate on analyzing Buñuel's characteristic visual, aural, and narrative strategies. Beyond that, we situate his films in relevant aesthetic, cultural, political, and national contexts in an attempt to understand how a career that spans five decades and as many countries can both retain its own internal coherence and yet participate meaningfully in disparate and often incompatible arenas. J. Lastra. Spring. (F)

283. Classical Film Theory (=CMS 270, Eng 283, GS Hum 206). This course examines basic questions associated with the film medium through the writings of some of its earliest and most influential theorists. Beginning with the question of what constitutes a "theoretical" or "philosophical" approach to film, we pursue a series of persistent issues. What is the nature of film's relationship to reality? Are there "essential" features of the medium that determine its form? How do images and editing make meaning? We place writers (such as Vachel Lindsay, Hugo Münsterberg, Sergei Eisenstein, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and André Bazin) in historical and cultural terms, and use their work to frame our own theoretical questions. J. Lastra. Spring. (F)

292/692. Modernity and the Sense of Things (=CMS 274, Eng 292/692, GendSt 292). This course engages the discourse of modernity as an account of the subject/object relation that foregrounds, on the one hand, the history of the senses, and, on the other, the fate of "things." The course begins with classic sociological accounts of modernity in work by Simmel, Weber, Veblen, and Lukács. We then track some key problems through accounts of the material, cultural, and sensory manifestations of modernity, with a particular focus on how the cinema was seen to crystallize the changed experience of things and people. This includes work by Giedion, Kracauer, Benjamin, Mumford, Stein, Gorky, Epstein, Woolf, Barnes, and Heidegger. M. Hansen, B. Brown. Spring.

294/494. Studies in Narrative. We give close examination to a great variety of narrative by a great variety of writers. The idea is to deal not only with the texts and their authors but with narrative itself, what it is and how it functions. R. Stern. Spring. (E)

297. Reading Course. PQ: Consent of instructor and associate chair for undergraduate studies. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Must be taken for a letter grade. The kind and amount of work to be done are determined by an instructor within the Department of English who has agreed to supervise the course. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

299. Independent B.A. Paper Preparation. PQ: Consent of instructor and associate chair for undergraduate studies. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. May not be counted toward the distribution requirements for the concentration, but may be counted as a departmental elective. In consultation with a faculty member, students devote the equivalent of a one-quarter course to the preparation of a B.A. paper. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.